ON COLLEGES.

2 Big Ten Coaching Changes Leave Ugly Stench

April 01, 2001|BY ANDREW BAGNATO.

The Final Four, the carnival culmination of the NCAA's monthlong Division I hoops extravaganza, arrived in Minneapolis this weekend. But the true flavor of big-time college basketball could be found in two other Big Ten towns--Madison, Wis., and Ann Arbor, Mich.

Some of the finer ingredients of the college basketball stew--deception, disloyalty and insane expectations--were on display when the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan filled coaching vacancies last week.

Let's take a whiff of what's cooking at Michigan, which named Tommy Amaker to succeed Brian Ellerbe.

Amaker is charged with reviving a scandal-rocked program that has fallen far behind archrival Michigan State. A standout point guard at Duke and former assistant to Mike Krzyzewski, Amaker was delivered by the Coach K outplacement agency.

But what does Amaker bring beyond the Coach K seal of approval? Amaker seemed to have put Seton Hall back on the basketball map when he led it to the Sweet 16 a year ago. The Pirates were poised for more after Amaker reeled in a highly touted recruiting class last year. But after opening the season in the Top 10, the Pirates collapsed and finished 16-15. They lost 12 of their last 17, and their showcase moment was a locker-room fight between two players.

The Hall missed the NCAA tournament for the third time in Amaker's four years. Amaker was 13 games over .500 in four years. The Pirates stood still while Boston College, Providence and Notre Dame zoomed past them in the mediocre Big East. Nice building job, eh?

Understand that Amaker may have been Michigan's fourth choice behind Rick Pitino, Ben Braun and Skip Prosser. Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin did his homework, consulting Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, who introduced him to various college basketball powerbrokers. Delany, a North Carolina grad, wasn't involved in the Amaker negotiations, but he played a role in the search. It may be the first time a Tar Heel set a pick for a Blue Devil.

If it's hard to tell why Michigan wanted Amaker, it's not hard to understand why Amaker wanted to go to Michigan. You didn't think Coach K, one of the self-appointed guardians of the college game, would allow himself to be replaced by a guy from Seton Hall, did you? Much better to pluck the next Duke coach from the Harvard of Washtenaw County. If Amaker wins at Michigan, he'll put himself in prime position to take the top job in college ball.

But let's leave Amaker's future aside for the moment. It's his recent past that became an issue last week.

Michigan fans will be thrilled to know that the school has hired the hoops equivalent of Gary Barnett. Even as Amaker-to-Ann Arbor swirled in basketball circles, Amaker swore he wasn't a candidate.

Then he took the job. Amaker may have thought he was smarter than everyone else--that's not uncommon in the Durham hoops factory--but the people in New Jersey sniffed a phony. Here's what Jerry Izenberg of the Newark Star-Ledger wrote:

"Tommy Amaker left Seton Hall with no halo, with no logical explanation and, most of all, with an ugly wake of basketball promises made, basketball debts unpaid and a single, unanswered question: `Tommy Amaker, who were you?' The University of Michigan can wrestle with that one now." No one begrudges Amaker a better job. But the way he fled Seton Hall, with three years left on his contract, left a foul smell even by Jersey standards.

That brings us to Wisconsin, which dumped Brad Soderberg four months after he stepped in to replace Dick Bennett, who resigned unexpectedly. Soderberg had led the Badgers to the NCAA tournament for the seventh time in school history. But that wasn't good enough for Badgers Athletic Director Pat Richter, who said the program needed a nationally recognized coach.

Translation: Rick Majerus, the Wisconsin-bred Utah coach. As always, Majerus was open to discussion. And as always, he decided to stay put in Utah.

Ryan won a bunch of Division III national titles at Wisconsin-Platteville, and he may turn out to be a fine coach for the Badgers. But there doesn't seem to be much difference between Ryan and Soderberg, except that Soderberg already has proved he could win in the Big Ten.

"When a guy's filling the seats and his players graduate, and you win like they don't usually win at Wisconsin . . . I'm not sure what else you need," Purdue coach Gene Keady said. "There must have been some other factors that the administration was considering."

Keady hit it on the head. There were other factors. Wisconsin got sucked into the expectations game. One magical run to the Final Four made the Badgers' braintrust believe the school could be a big-time basketball player.

They apparently forgot that in the all-time Big Ten basketball standings, Wisconsin is ninth. The University of Chicago is 10th.

Wisconsin always has been a football school first.

And a dairy school second.

And a hockey school third.

Wisconsin fell victim to the same dementia that led Tennessee to fire Jerry Green after he led the Volunteers to the NCAA tournament for the fourth straight year, that led Ohio University to fire Larry Hunter after a 19-win season.

Georgetown coach Craig Esherick, who knows how difficult it must be to recruit talent in Dairyland, sent an earth-to-Madison message last week.

"How many people in this country grow up wanting to go to Wisconsin?" Esherick said. "There are some universities that have a national following, but I don't think Wisconsin's one of them."

Not all that long ago, they'd have thrown a parade for any coach who led the Badgers to the NCAA tournament.